Chris Frantz, Remain in Love *** 1/2

Chris Frantz is the drummer for Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club. Remain in Love is his memoir and a valentine to his wife and bass partner Tina Weymouth. The first sentence of the Preface captures the tone of the book well:

I had the great fortune to not only be a founding member of one of the most unique and exciting rock bands of all time, but to do so alongside the love of my life, Tina Weymouth.

Frantz has a friendly, casual writing style, and favors light anecdotes about people he has met and liked. His stories sound very much like what you would hear if you met him at a dinner party or sat next to him on an airplane. If you told your raconteur friend, "You should write a book!", it might come out like Remain in Love.

He comes across as an affable fellow, with only positive things to say about everyone except for recurring bitter comments about David Byrne. He provides the same enthusiastic introductions for his high school friends as he does for Brian Eno or Lou Reed. He describes the hotels, theaters, bus rides, and dinners more than musical subjects, which contributes to the everyman vibe but frankly makes me wonder about his defensiveness regarding his talent. (He feels obliged to mention every time someone praises him or Tina.)

I wish Frantz had elaborated more about how the various members of Talking Heads contributed to its sound and about the dynamics within the band. Jerry Harrison's perspective was notably absent from Frantz's diatribes against David Byrne. Of course, that would make Remain in Love a different book altogether, a more traditional rock memoir. That more traditional memoir would also be more forthcoming about the darker shadings of Frantz' character, such as his drug problems.

Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle ***

I heard an interview with Whitehead on NPR during which he characterized Harlem Shuffle as a crime story from the point of view of a peripheral character, namely a part-time fence who owns a furniture story. I liked that idea. The interviewer also commented on its sense of place (Harlem in the early 1960s).

Whitehead splits the difference between a pulp thriller and a literary social novel, doing a passable job at each. The prose feels clunky every once in while, as if Whitehead is shoehorning in some color about, for example, the World's Fair.

The most effective aspects of the book happen in the margins. In the early going, we gradually learn about the mismatch between our hero's self-image as a solid citizen and his low-key support of local criminals. Ray Carney grew up in Harlem as the son of a crook, but on a couple of occasions he travels through town with another character and sees a different city hidden in plain sight.

Louise Glück, Poems 1962 - 2012 ****

I don't read much poetry. I'm unable to sustain the necessary concentrated attention. However, Louise Glück won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2020 and has a reputation for "her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal" and for frank expressions of sadness and isolation. Sign me up!

I heard that Glück's style varies widely between books, so I purchased this collection rather than a more narrow slice of her work. It's true: each individual book has a distinctive feel, with recurring themes and images appearing in multiple poems.

Her early work didn't speak to me, and so I read it fairly superficially. But then suddenly, most of the poems about her family in the book Ararat engaged me, as did the nature poems of The Wild Iris. My interest tapered off during subsequent books, only to return again for the final book in this collection, A Village Life. 

Rebecca Goldstein, Incompleteness ***

Incompleteness is from the Great Discoveries series, in which a novelist undertakes to explain a great scientific discovery in literary terms without oversimplifying the technical details. In this case, Goldstein tackles Gödel's incompleteness theorems.

Very little of the book –– only about 20 pages –– actually attempts to explain the theorems. In fact, surprisingly little is about Gödel at all. Goldstein devotes significant time explaining the Vienna Circle, of which Gödel was a member despite apparently disagreeing with their very raison d'etre. As her chapter title puts it, Gödel was "A Platonist among the Positivists."

Goldstein's major thesis is that Gödel felt like an exile among his peers because (a) logical positivism came to dominate Anglo-European philosophy and (b) that dominant group managed to misinterpret his work so that it supported their point of view, which was anathema to him. She makes this case most effectively in the introduction while describing his unlikely friendship with Albert Einstein. In fact, I think you could get most of the value from this book by reading just the introduction.

Intellectually, the most interesting aspect of Incompleteness for me is its compelling argument for Platonism, for an objective realm of abstract things. "Einstein and Gödel's metaconvictions were addressed to the question of whether their respective fields are descriptions of an objective reality––existing independent of our thinking of it––or, rather, are subjective human projections, socially shared intellectual constructs." I personally believe this is a false dichotomy, that science is a subjectively projected organization that we use to understand an objective reality to which we have no access other than through our constructs (which I wouldn't characterize as "socially shared" or "intellectual").

I'm rating Incompleteness with one fewer stars than the first time I read it. During this reading, I felt indignant on Gödel's behalf about how much attention Goldstein paid to Wittgenstein and to formalism in mathematics. It short-changes the proofs themselves and limits Gödel's strange biography to a series of anecdotes in the epilogue.

Elliott Chaze, Black Wings Has My Angel *****

The blade crunched going in and somehow I'd never thought much one way or the other about bones. You think of shoving a knife into somebody and the picture is all meat and steel, with no bones.

You think of a noir crime novel from 1953 and the picture is all urban and cynical, with no outdoors or conscience. The lovers in Black Wings Has My Angel match the profile of the genre – he's an escaped ex-con, she's a classy escort disguised as a ten-dollar tramp, and they have a plan for an elaborate heist – but they have more complex characters than you expect in a pulp novel. Tim questions his own compulsions, loves the freedom of the Colorado mountains, and retains hope for the future. Virginia may or may not be looking to double-cross Tim, but she enthusiastically supports him.

The story has plenty of the traditional pleasures of the genre, such as stylized dialogue, the slow revelation of the planned caper, and uncertainty about Virginia's motivations. It also has lovely sequences about camping, the satisfaction of a job well done, differences between the South and the West, and differences of opinion regarding what constitutes the good life. Most noir novels (and films) have a fatalistic worldview, but this one still believes that joy is possible.

Ben Macintyre, Agent Sonya ***

Ben Macintyre writes non-fiction spy stories for general audiences; I previously read The Spy and the Traitor.  He has a talent for building a compelling story, injecting the right amount of context and psychological supposition into the facts of the narrative. However, he covers so broad a territory in Agent Sonya that it undermines the inherent drama.

Agent Sonya is the true story of Ursula Kuczynski, a German Jew who spent a lifetime spying for the Soviet Union. She was recruited as a young (and pregnant) wife in 1930s Shanghai and helped establish spy networks in the Far East, Switzerland, and Britain. Near the end of the Second World War, she was a valuable conduit for intelligence about the British atomic weapons program. She accomplished all of her espionage while raising three children (from three different fathers) and maintaining her cover as a housewife. She ended her career in East Germany as an author of young adult books.

Macintyre efficiently sets the scene for each episode, situating Ursula's adventures in the larger history. For example, he paints a vivid picture of Shanghai during the period of international concessions. But there is just too much material: not only 25 years of clandestine activity from Ursula, but multiple hotbeds of international intrigue (pre-revolutionary China, Japanese-occupied Manchuria, the Spanish Civil War, WWII-era Switzerland, early Cold War Britain) and contact with other infamous and colorful characters. Nearly every chapter includes a story that would benefit from closer attention: a plan to assassinate Hitler, near exposure by a jealous nanny, friendship with the Nazi arms dealer next door in Manchuria. 

It is surprising that Ursula avoids capture for so long given that her father and brother were well-known public communist sympathizers and her first husband a convicted Soviet agent. She also works closely with several different people introduced with claims of importance such as "Alexander Allan Foote is one of the most important, but also one of the most enduringly mysterious, figures in modern espionage history" (p 149). So many important and obvious spies in her orbit!

Macintyre is a strong writer of narrative but less skilled at developing characters. Ursula comes across as cold-blooded in pursuit of her ideals, but she also has loving and sexual relationships with several of her colleagues. She seems drawn to unstable men. I would have liked a better sense of Ursula's personality. (I had this same comment/complaint about The Spy and the Traitor.)

Ayad Akhtar, Homeland Elegies *** 1/2

 Ayad Akhtar is best known as a playwright, so it should come as no surprise that the best parts of this "novel" come in the dialogue. Akhtar has Big Ideas to convey about the nature of the American Dream, for immigrants and Muslims in particular, and he puts those ideas into the mouths of his conflicted characters. His father, his mother, his college professor, his benefactor: they all have distinct world views that flow from a unique insight. Those insights are mostly thought-provoking and usually arise naturally based on the action of the story. However, the characters (and their Weltanschauungen) don't interact with each other, making the overall book feel disjointed.

I put the word "novel" in quotes because the book takes the form of a lightly(?) fictionalized memoir or essay collection. It believe Ahktar could take one more pass over the material and integrate it into an awesome play.

One other thing: While Ahktar generally creates rounded characters, he presents himself with a less critical eye. He comes across as a passive character shaped by others' ideas, which seems disingenuous. He mentions several times that people find his plays controversial and problematic, but willfully ignores any investigation of why that might be.